


A Dangerous Woman

by Skyepilot



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate History, Alternate Universe, Conspiracy, F/M, Flirting, Friends to Lovers, Hydra (Marvel), Inhumans (Marvel), Older Man/Younger Woman, Orphans, SHIELD, Skye | Daisy Johnson's Superpowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 05:11:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14097960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/pseuds/Skyepilot
Summary: Cousy AU inspired by the 2018 movie Tomb Raider.





	A Dangerous Woman

"This is a pendant my mom gave me for good luck. It's the only thing I have left of her."

The man stares at the red jade ornament in his hands, glancing back up at her from behind the bulletproof glass.

"I'll give you eight grand for it," he announces.

"C'mon," she says, leaning her elbow against the glass and staring down at him. "It's worth way more than that."

"If it's worth so much, you wouldn't be here," he tells her, as the door behind the pawn shop counter opens up behind him and a woman emerges, wearing lots of gold and a leopard print dress.

"Eric," she tells him, loudly. "Stop flirting."

"I'm not flirting, LT," he says defensively, as the two women exchange a glance. "I just wanted to hear her sad orphan story, to go with all the other sad orphan stories I hear-"

"It's true," she interrupts, crossing her arms at him. "My parents both were killed in an attack on the village I grew up in."

"Oh, this is getting even better," he says, nodding, before looking back at LT with a grin. "You grew up in a village. Right."

"In China," she presses, and then shrugs at him. "Look, if you don't believe me, fine, but at least give me ten?"

"I'll give you seven," he says. "Next you'll tell me your parents are spies on the run from a secret evil society."

She opens her mouth, then shuts it, staring at the women and the guy and trying to figure out if they're married, or just related.

"Fine," she tells him, as he sets the money down on the countertop between them, and pushes it through the window. "And don't worry, I won't tell the cops about all the good stuff you keep in the back."

"Hey!" he says, standing up and leaning towards her, a panicked expression on his face.

She smirks and waves the wad of cash at him before she exits the pawn shop door.

"I'll be back for that!"

"What's your name?" he calls after her.

"It's Skye."

  
###

  
She hadn't been back to the orphanage in years, and she had her reasons.

In and out of foster care, she ran away from the last family at seventeen, and has been looking for information on her real parents ever since.

But then she had heard that something bad happened at the orphanage, that it had caught fire and the circumstances had seemed suspicious. She knows all about keeping secrets.

Something inside of her made her want to go back there. To find out if they were hiding secrets. The nuns had been very tight-lipped when she asked to see her paperwork.

And now, it was probably all gone, but she had to know for herself.

There were the charred remains of the building, most of the brick still standing. Cordoned off, but that wasn't going to stop her. She dug her flashlight out of her van and crossed the street to make her way inside.

The head nun's office used to be on the second floor, but, what she noticed was that there was still a structure connecting the two floors, one she hadn't noticed the many times she'd been in her office.

It went down lower, down to the basement, which still looked like it was intact. The metal door that is sealed tight at the bottom won't move for her, but she has other ways of opening things.

She concentrates and lifts her hands and sees the door start to shake, coming loose from the wall. There are marks along her arms, that always happens after, but she pulls down the sleeve of her t-shirt to cover it.

Inside of the room, are old file boxes with labels on them that don't mean anything to her, and there is very little electronic equipment, it's all analog in here. So much for hacking.

Putting the end of the flashlight in her mouth, she starts to look through the boxes, one by one. Everything is an acronym of some kind or another.

"TAHITI," she says out loud. "Sounds like a vacation, I'll give it a try."

Taking the lid off, she sees a stack of files, most of them with disturbing stamps declaring the people involved deceased. Except for one. He's middle aged, and kind of pleasant looking, but also there's something sad in his expression.

An address is attached to it, and when she hears someone moving about outside of the room, she takes it, and stuffs it in her pocket before she turns off the flashlight and makes her way around the perimeter of the room.

"Get rid of all of it," she hears a woman's voice say. "You have your orders."

She takes a deep breath and sees the flashlights of the other party skimming along the floor, and the woman comes in, dressed in high heels and a flower dress, looking completely out of place.

"It's a pity," she says aloud, apparently to herself, as the dark-glad men with her start to spread gasoline over the room. "All of this research. Up in flames."

Since she knows what comes next, she tries to get out of the room while they're occupied, and makes a noise, just like in the movies, and the flashlights are turned on her.

"Get her!" the woman says, her eyes suddenly large and staring at her with intensity.

She starts to run, but stumbles and hits the bottom of the staircase, scrambling up as she feels one of the men take hold of her leg.

"Get. Off!" she is trying to control her powers, but it's harder when things get out of control.

The man goes flying away from her and hits the ground with a thud.

"Wait!" the women in the flower dress says, holding back the other man. "Let her go."

"Are you-" he starts in.

"I said, let her go," she repeats menacingly, and Skye scrambles up the stairs and runs out of the room before she changes her mind.

  
###

  
Selling the pendant gave her enough money to get to where she needed to go. Tickets to Tahiti cost, like, two grand. And even selling her van didn't give her much.

Plus, she has to get this guy to cooperate, and it might come with a price tag.

She finds the fishing boat parked further out, like it's trying to avoid being a part of the crowd. And it looks like it's been cared for, even though it's obviously old.

Taking the piece of paper out of her jacket pocket, she looks down at it again, getting a good look at the guys face before approaching.

"Hello?" she asks, not wanting to step onto it without permission. "Anybody home?"

"Who wants to know?" a voice projects from inside of the cabin.

"My name's Skye, and I have a few questions if you don't mind?"

She can hear rustling from inside of the boat, but no one is coming out, she just hears the sound of the boat's hull rocking in the water against the dock.

"Okay, I'm coming on board. I flew here all the way from New York, so-"

Before she can step foot on the boat, she feel someone grab her from behind, and she knocks her head back against the assailant's nose, and then steps on his foot, before she turns and raises her hand to see the scruffy five-o-clock shadow and the rumpled cotton shirt. And the blue eyes.

"It's you," she says, stepping back from him, and tripping, almost falling onto the deck of the boat when he reaches out a hand and catches her.

"If you're going to do this, get it over with," he says, narrowing his eyes at her, and wiping at his bloodied nose with the back of his hand.

"Um, do what?" she asks, as he pulls her up by the wrist, hauling her to her feet. "Sorry about your nose."

"Sorry?" he asks, raising his eyebrows at her, then starting to chuckle. "Okay."

"Will you please talk to me?" she asks, pleading with him. "It will only take a minute. And, I know you don't want to talk to me, and I don't blame you."

His expression turns curious, if still a bit apprehensive, and he slowly nods his agreement to her. "Alright. A minute. Come inside."

"What did you think I was going to do to you?" she asks him, alarmed, thinking of the people at the orphanage back in New York.

"Kill me?" he says pointedly, and extends his hand to help her onto the boat.

"Do I look dangerous to you?" she asks, appalled, crossing her arms as he walks past her and opens the cabin door.

He pauses and stares back at her with a smirk. "You look like you might be very dangerous."

She's not sure how to answer that.

  
###

  
"They were using you to try to find an alien temple," she repeats back to him.

"Yes," he tells her, looking at the sun going down over the water, and unscrewing the top of the rum. "Sounds crazy, right? Then I had someone who helped me get out, and I've been hiding ever since."

"Were the aliens," she says, licking her lips and leaning forward across the table, meeting his eyes. "Blue?"

He stands up suddenly from the card table and sets the bottle down on it. "I don't know, but the drug they injected me with was blue."

"I'm trying to find answers, just like you," she tells him. "My mother told me stories about them, when I was a child. At least, think I remember. They made people that were special. But then-"

"Your parents are dead, aren't they?" he says, emotion filling up his voice, as he leans and pours a lot of rum into a little glass.

"Yes," she admits, staring back up at him, as her eyes grow large. "How did you-"

"Because that's how they cover their tracks," he tells her. "They wanted a weapon, something that was hidden in the temple."

"They were looking for people like me," she suddenly realizes. The medical tests they always ran on them at the orphanage, like they were looking for something, but not sure what.

"People like you?" he asks slowly.

She doesn't know if she can trust him, but something in her gut tells her she has to. There isn't anyone else. She's been looking her whole life for others like her and her mother, and this seems like the only person left who might have answers.

"I'm different," she tells him. "There's something inside of me, and sometimes I can control it, and other times-"

"Like a superhero?" he asks, his voice giving away his awe.

"You're not afraid of me?" she asks, blinking up at him, as he finishes the glass of rum and sets it down on the table, then walks away, going deeper into the cabin, she can hear him moving stuff around.

He comes back and sets something down in front of her on the table.

"They were my dad's," he tells her, sitting down. "It's a complete collection. That makes it really rare, just so you know. Only three complete sets still exist, I think."

"Impressive," she says, trying not to smile, because she doesn't want him to think she's laughing at him, and watches him file through them like it's been a long time since he looked at them. "So you have a thing for superheroes?"

"Just, heroes," he sighs, touching his fingers along one of the cards. "Part of me thinks that if they really existed, maybe none of this would've happened to me? Maybe they would've saved my dad, too?"

"Who did this to you?" she asks him, reaching between them and putting her hand on his wrist. He stares at it for a moment, like he hasn't been touched in a long time.

"They call themselves HYDRA."

  
###

  
"You don't contact Fury, he contacts you," he tells her as they walk down the streets of San Juan together.

"This is the first time I've gone off the mainland," she jokes, shoving her hands in the pockets of her jeans. "At least since I left China as a kid."

"Being here is slightly less ironic than being in Tahiti after being a part of a secret experiment called TAHITI," he smirks back at her. "It's a nice day."

They've spent a lot of time together in the past week. Combing through his memories and her working out the pieces to the puzzle. The map that he had been a part of constructing was missing an element. One that he said HYDRA was still trying to figure out.

It was only after he had drawn it from memory, and she knows that it had been hard on him, she had stayed up late nights with him, as he recalled the experiment in detail. A life where he had lost the ability to choose. Something she understood entirely.

She had sat and looked at their map on the deck of the boat, staring at the dots and lines burned into her brain.

"Code," she told herself, rubbing at her tired eyes. "Is it a code, or...?"

Coulson had been stacking up the checkers they play in between breaks. He'd stopped taking the boat out to catch fish since she offered to fund their adventure. Cooking their meals while she tried to work on the puzzle he'd given her.

Then staring at the stacks, just as he accidentally knocked one loose, and she leaned down to catch it as it rolled across the deck towards her, holding the round shape between her fingers.

"What if it's....not two dimensional?" she told him, excitement in her breath, standing and moving towards him, setting the piece down on the board.

His eyebrows had gone up immediately, like she was the answer he was looking for.

Now, they are chasing the map she constructed, hacking into government files and piecing it together from the geographic details on the map. Her mother had told her that the Kree temple was under the ocean.

Her mother sang her a song and she still remembers parts of it. About coming from the stars, and a secret place where they dwelled. She remembers all of that, except her name.

The nuns at the orphanage named her, but she changed it to Skye as soon as she was able to get electronic access to her legal files.

"I don't think I ever thanked you," he tells her, as they stop at a vendor and he tries on hats while they talk. "For helping to repair a little part of my life. For giving me a chance to fight back."

She tries not to blush, and the weather is already kind of warm, she's tied her denim shirt around her waist, and tilts her head sideways at his too sincere expression she's become used to.

"Not really a hat guy," he tells her, breaking their lingering eye contact and handing it back to the vendor.

Although she wants to appreciate the moment, and savor the way she feels when he looks at her that way, she sees a truck drive by, loaded with crates, and she recognizes the logo burned into them.

"HYDRA," she says, grabbing his arm and turning him to look with her.

They both follow the truck on foot.

  
###

  
It's not that she's afraid to use her powers, it's that she can't exactly control them. She feels they should be more precise, but she has nothing to measure them against.

Nothing except the memory of her mother. And if she thinks about what made her mother special, her memories aren't quite clear.

They manage to sneak down to the temple under the cover of night, and she passes their control room, checking out their setup from afar, computers and technology among these ancient ruins.

Then she hears the click of heels, and pulls Coulson closer against the wall with her.

It's the woman in the flower dress again. This time, it's blue. And Daisy remembers her letting her go, after she had demonstrated her powers.

"Let's go," she whispers to him, looking at the mechanism to lower people down to the inside of the temple, waiting until they observe the shift changes, stealing their way down with the large crates being sent down below.

When they reach the bottom, they move further into the temple, and they see a mural painted into the wall, the colors still preserved by it being sealed all this time. It tells a story, and she hears her mother's song in her head again.

"This is about the aliens," she tells him. "When they first came to Earth." She reaches out her hand to touch the images, as Coulson moves further ahead, just within the arc of her light.

"Daisy, look at this!" he calls out, and she moves quickly through the story, until she sees the image in front of her. "Is this-"

"My mother," she replies, finding herself suddenly shaking again. She described to him one night her mother's face, the way she remembered it. The likeness is accurate.

"How is that possible? he asks her. "This is thousands of years old?"

"I don't know," she tells him, shaking her head, “but if she was here, that means, that there are other people like me," she tells him, pointing to the repeating images behind her, the outline of people of all different colors.

He looks happy for her, his eyes starting to turn liquid as hers do the same, when a shot rings out and she sees him recoil against the wall, falling to the ground.

"It's you again," the woman in the flower dress says, approaching with her mercenary soldiers behind her. "I knew you were special."

She bends down to check on Coulson, who nods his head at her, that he's hurt but not dying, as they both look up at the woman in the flower dress.

"Do you know about the blue angels?" she asks her with a piercing gaze, then looking up at the murals. "They came here at the beginning of time, and gave us a very special gift."

With a wave of her fingers towards one of the soldiers, he brings a box forward and she opens the lock, pulling out a silver irregular object.

The soldiers seem to back away as she lifts it out of the box and it glows. "What does this do?" she asks her, demanding.

"I don't know," she says, then she has a flash of memory, and squeezes her eyes shut. Her mother, desperate, telling her to not be afraid. The village burning behind her as she presses a blue crystal into her hand.

"You do know," the other woman tells her, moving closer to her. "Your parents died with that secret, Daisy."

She starts to shake, looking around the temple as the entire temple starts to rattle, sending thousand-year old dust loose from the crevices.

"How do you know my parents?" she asks, trying to control her powers from taking over. She can see the purple lines moving up her arms as she clenches her teeth against the agonizing pain.

"I never actually met your parents," the woman tells her. "I'm Raina. And I believe that I'm special, like you. Should we find out?"

Handing the glowing object out to her, she shoves it towards Daisy. "It kills if you're not someone very special," she tells her with mad eyes.

As she starts to back away, Raina moves the object towards Coulson. "We can try it on him first!"

"No," Daisy yells and stands up between her and Coulson. She reaches out for the object and takes hold of it, holding her breath, as it starts to glow.

"There is a place I need you need to see," Raina tells her, nodding down the corridor. "If you want him to live."

  
###

  
The cocoon. Yes. A part of her remembers this. The object had opened inside the chamber that sealed them in.

Maybe Raina is dead? What if she wasn't special after all?

Then the cracks start to form along the shape where Raina stood, the crust starting to come apart until Raina is standing before her again.

"What did it do to me?" she asks, looking at her. "It hurts," she pants, leaning to prop herself against the wall, pressing her fist to her temple. "No," she says, shaking her head. "No, you can't stop me!"

The chamber they were trapped in slides apart, and Daisy runs through the corridor, hearing Raina calling after her from behind. She stops when she sees the image of her mother, of her mother leading a rebellion against the blue aliens.

She wanted it to stop here. To not continue beyond these walls, in the hands of people who want to abuse this. Turn people like her into weapons.

"It's a pity that I can't learn more about you," Raina says, leaning against the wall. "We are the same thing. But if I don't kill you, I don't get out of here alive."

Daisy watches as she raises the hem of her dress, and reaches for a gun concealed against her thigh. She raises it towards her, taking aim.

They hear gunshots from further down the corridor, and Daisy uses the distraction to raise her hand to Raina, and sends her flying against the wall.

"We're not weapons," she tells her, furious as the gun scatters across the floor. "You won't turn people like us into weapons.

"You can't stop fate," she tells her, lifting herself up off the ground, dusting her flower dress off. "The temple will fight back, see?"

She turns and notices more of the soldiers coming towards her, moving like they're puppets under someone else's control.

"We were meant to rule this world!" Raina says, sliding along the wall. "And humans? They're meant to serve us."

"No," Daisy answers, shaking her head. "I'm going to stop this."

Raina yells after her as she runs back towards the heart of the temple, picking up the gun and stumbling after her. "You'll die, too!"

Daisy thinks about her mother. About her gift.

It's not just about what happened to her.

It's about who she chooses to become.

  
###

  
"Skye," he tells Fury, looking down into the hole that leads down to the heart of the temple. "I mean, Daisy. I'm going back for Daisy."

"Phil," the other man replies. "The earthquake, it was- There could be flooding if it broke the sea wall."

"I know," he answers, with a shrug, squinting through one black eye. "But, I have to know."

"We'll finish up here," Fury tells him, touching his shoulder and squeezing it. "I'll make sure HYDRA doesn't get away."

"How did you know?" he says, getting into the lift that will take him to the lower levels. "Were to find us?'

"I've got eyes everywhere, Phil," he says with a grin. Even though he's making a joke about the eyepatch, he knows that Fury has made it his mission to hunt down HYDRA and get revenge.

"If we make it through this," he tells him, as he pushes the mechanism to lower him down. "I want in."

"It's dangerous work!" Fury calls down after him.

But Coulson isn't paying attention now, he's crawling over the broken walls and collapsed pieces of ceiling and making his way further in, shining the flashlight ahead.

There are bodies down here, they look mostly like the mercenaries, and then a circular area, that looks like a chamber.

He presses his hands against it to see if it will give and then yells her name out.

There is no reply, so he screams her name, and tries knocking on the thick walls to see if anyone is alive on the other side, but there's nothing, and he can feel the moisture in the air, see the water starting to pool near the wall.

"I can't lose you," he says aloud, turning his head sideways against the wall. "You're...everything."

"Coulson?"

At first he blinks, thinking he's imagining it, and then he hears it again. Her voice, saying his name.

"Skye?"

"We have to talk about that," she says, muffled by the rock. "Stand back?"

He scrambles back to where he can still see her, as the wall collapses and the ground moves beneath him.

The dust settles, and Skye is there, standing in front of him. Bloodied and bruised, but alive, like a miracle.

As they move towards each other, they hear the sound of a crack that's continuing, the sound of water.

"Run!" he says, taking her hand.

  
###

  
"Daisy," he says, showing up with a bouquet of the flowers bearing the same name. "I'm working on getting it right."

She smiles up at him from the hospital bed, taking the flowers from him. "Thanks."

"I heard that you'll be out of here soon," he tells her. "That the microfractures in your arms will just take some time?"

"Yeah," she tells him, glancing down at her bandaged arms. "But the temple is underwater. It was worth it."

He sighs, and sits down in the chair next to her. "I'm sorry we couldn't find out more about your mother."

"We will. And I know more than I did before?" she says with a small smile. "That HYDRA is still out there? With that information?"

"They killed my parents, too," he replies, reaching a hand out for hers. "I told Fury, I'm going to join up, to try to fight this thing."

"Wow, look at you, big action hero guy."

"Let's not get carried away," he says, looking away as he starts to blush, but wrapping his fingers in hers. "What are you going to-"

"I think I can do a lot of good. They can use my hacking skills, and there are more people like me that will need protecting. They can help me learn to use my powers, maybe? Besides, I'm pretty fond of one of their agents."

"Oh, who?' he asks glancing up at her, starting to take his fingers away, thinking about all the people they've met in the last several days.

"New guy," she tells him, putting her own hand over his. "And just so you know, he has only one of three Captain America card collections in existence."

"Have I ever told you how much I like dangerous women?" he says, unable to hold back his smile, reaching his fingers to brush along her long brown hair.

"Yeah, I think you said that on the first day we met," she says, just has he leans across the bed to kiss her, and she hasn't stopped thinking about him since they met. He came back for her, like she was everything.

They pull apart when the nurse comes in to check on her, and he stands up to get out of the way, and puts his hand against her arm, sliding his thumb along her hospital gown in a comforting gesture.

"I owe you, you know," he tells her, trying to see her past the nurse. "We spent a lot of your money, and I don't have much, but-"

"I'm sure we can work it out," she tells him, with a smirk.

"Looking forward to getting started," he says with a lingering stare, as he steps outside of the room.

She's never had a partner before.

  
###

  
"Thank you for holding on to this."

He stares at her from behind the bulletproof glass as she puts the red jade pendant around her neck.

"You kept up your end of the bargain," he says with a shrug. "Although, you know, the world is a really dangerous place, you could probably use my help."

"Oh really?!" she asks, raising her eyebrows as she slides the money under the window.

"Keep it," he tells her.

"You're just giving me my necklace back, no strings attached?" she smiles in disbelief.

"Actually," he complains. "It was really valuable. Like, crazy, valuable, but," he says, lifting his hands in a surrendering gesture. "I'm under orders."

"Whose orders," she asks him, narrowing her eyes.

"Fury's," he says, at the door behind him opens and LT comes out, this time wearing silver and a zebra print.

"So, you guys," she says, looking between them are, S-"

"Don't say the S-word out loud," Eric interrupts her, standing up from his plastic lined chair. "Never say it out loud, it's a secret."

"Got it," she says, with a nod. "Let's see what you've got back there?" she asks with a smile.

Eric and LT look at each other as he presses a security button and the auto-lock door pops open, then they lead her to the back of the vault, where Eric enters a security code as the door slides open and Daisy can see a small group of people working in a monitoring station beyond.

"Agent Johnson," LT tells her, holding out her hand. "Welcome to Level 1."

"You have levels?" she asks, with a grimace.

"No," LT laughs. "Just made that up."


End file.
